StoreSEO wiped my manual alt text on Shopify — how to restore it
StoreSEO's bulk image optimization auto-generates image alt text from a template (usually product title plus store name) and applies it across your whole catalog in a single run — and when it does, it replaces whatever alt text was already on each image, including the descriptions you wrote by hand over the past few days. Image alt text is a real Shopify field with no version history, so there's no native undo and no record of what each image said before, which is why one bulk pass can quietly flatten days of manual work.
Step by step
Turn off StoreSEO's bulk / auto image optimization first. Open its Image Optimization (alt text) settings and disable the auto-generate or apply-to-all rule — otherwise it re-applies its template on the next run and overwrites your fix again. Check whether it also touched collection images and variant images, not just the main product photo.
Recover your originals from any copy you still have: re-import the Image Alt Text column from a pre-change CSV export (Matrixify exports and re-imports alt text per image), since Shopify keeps no native undo for this field. If you've ever exported your products, that file is the fastest way back.
Where nothing survives, the alt text has to be rewritten by hand — start with the images that matter most. In Google Search Console > Performance, switch Search type to Image to see which products actually earn image-search clicks, rewrite those first, then work down the list.
Going forward, keep a daily snapshot of every image's alt text (most full-store backups skip alt text entirely) so a single StoreSEO run is flagged the day it happens — with the app that changed it named — and your full set of hand-written alt text restores in one click instead of a manual rebuild.
Source: StoreSEO app listing (bulk image optimization / alt text feature); Shopify Help Center: add alt text to product images
SEO Vault keeps a daily snapshot of every SEO field on your store — meta titles, descriptions, alt-text, tags, handles (products AND collections) — and emails you the moment something changes in bulk, with the likely app responsible. One click restores yesterday's state, just the SEO fields. Free to monitor and get alerted; $14/mo for 1-click restore.